Greetings from paradise

Well the day before yesterday I landed in Dubrovnik, Croatia and spent the day yesterday lying on the beach. The weather is amazing, the water is clear blue and the people are friendly. Today I m in Kotor, Montenegro, which is nested in a breath-taking fjord, is plastered with white marble tiles and surrounded by huge palm trees. I really feel like Im finally winding down!! Having in any case a lot of fun!!!

Medimax Customer Service Sucks!

So, my exams went well, all my marks are satisfying. This week I was giving an intensive french class (4 hours a day) and working hard before my vacation.

This weekend being my last weekend before I leave (on Thursday), I wanted to buy the few last things I need etc. Including a small fan I can plug into the van for the over-30-degree-Celsius-temperature in Greece. Off to the local Medimax (german appliance store).

It's Saturday, obviously the day of the week where the most customers are there. I look around and see only one fan, and it's definitely too big to bring in my luggage. I look around on my own, trying to find a smaller one by myself. Nada. In a country where air conditioning is a week breeze of very humid, slightly-cooler-than the-surrounding-temperature air, I thought they would be bound to have at least more than just one model of fans. I finally give up, and look for a salesperson to help me out. It didn't really matter if they did have more or not, it's just that since I was already there, I wanted to be sure I didn't just miss their "fan" section before going home. Double nada. At the other end of the store, in the electronics department, I spot two fat-bellied-men that look like they work there, but they're deep in conversation. I start going through the departments, and finally find a lady in the cd and dvd section. I stand next to her, she just doesn't take notice, so I ask her kindly:
- "Excuse me maam, I was just wondering: I'm looking for a small fan and in the section next to this one I saw one, but it's pretty big and I'd like to know if you have other models".
She looks at me and just says:
-"That's not my section".
To which I (still kindly, but getting annoyed) reply:
-"Yes, I'm aware of that but there's nobody in that section and I just want to know if there are other models"
to which she answers, obviously annoyed
-"how should I know, I told you to ask somebody in the other section".
Mind you, I am used to bad customer service in Germany, but this just bugged me so much, I had to say something. So I answered:
-"Ok, thanks, great customer service by the way".
And THEN, she answers
-"well, if you're going to put in a complaint or something, I can go with you and look for another employee with you".
At that point (we were at the entrance of the store), I just gave up and said:
-"No thank you, I prefer for my money to pay the salary of someone who offers proper customer service, I'm sure I'll find another store where they carry fans."
She looked at me as if I had two heads, I wished her a nice day and I went off.

I don't get it. Especially in these times, where so many companies are going bankrupt and so many people are losing their jobs, you would think people here would MAYBE consider offering BASIC customer service? I get that Germans don't like the whole "hi, how are you, have a nice day" thing, and that's fine, but is it really that much to ask for? All I want is not have to BEG the employees to show me where the merchandise is so that I may PLEASE spend my money in their stores!

Medimax Schönhauser Allee, you suck.

I met Lady GaGa!!!

Last night I went to GaGa's show in Berlin and stuck around and got to talk to her and get her autograph afterwards... The show was amazing, and although I haven't been a groupie since my 16th birthday, it was fun being able to see her upclose and personal :)

Exams, exams, exams...

2 out of three survived, will be getting the marks shortly, last one up tomorrow.

Actually I know I'm really not using this blog to its full potential, but I'm hesitant to kill it off, since I might want to start using it again some time...

For example, posting vaca pics in september (pictures of croatia, albania, macedonia, montenegro and greece!)

Next I will be giving an intensive French class at university, and the week after I'm flying to Dubrovnik, where the bf will pick me up in our beloved van. Bliss!

My parents in law will be in Berlin for a week while we're away, and they'll be staying at my place... OH lord, let's hope this goes well! One thing is for sure, there will be an incredibly big summer cleaning before I leave!! And they'll finally get to meet Pouki-Helmut :)

I love Berlin in the summertime, it's so pretty and warm and bright!!

5 nights

After almost two years of long distance relationship, the bf will be moving back to Berlin - and back in with me - next weekend. I can't wait! Only 5 nights alone and then we'll be together again - for good! No more sad goodbyes, no more three weeks or more apart, no more saying good night on the phone!!!

Tonight we said goodbye for the last time for hopefully a very long time.

On Friday I'll be driving our van from Berlin to Cologne and Sunday we'll be driving back together.

Bliss!

Pure gore

I won't waste too many words on Salem's Lot: cute, made-for-tv, ok vampire movie. A bit long, and too many details, but nice special effects (when the vampires appear). Not that good, tension could be better. C minus.

Now, on the the real horror movie. The remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003, starring Jessica Biel) is a masterpiece of gore. The viewer feels uncomfortable in the first minutes of the movie and the tension just goes up and up until the end of the movie. The epitome of horror. Of course, being a slasher movie, there are lots of blood and guts, but it's well done. You feel the filth get under your skin. I give it an A, just because at some point there are things that seem unrealistic, but for a remake, I'm really impressed.

ugh, I still have goose bumps...

G'nite!

I want the last hour and a half of my life back!

This weekend, to celebrate my first weekend "off" in months, I rented 3 horror movies and will be reviewing them here. Tonight, I watched "Mother of Tears" , original title La Terza Madre, an Italian horror movie made in 2007. The plot goes like this: during construction work, an old unidentified coffin is accidentally dug up next to a cemetary close to a church in a little town in Italy. In it, the pastor finds bones and an urn, a talisman and three statues. He sends it to a museum in Rome, and asks an old friend, a historian of art, to analyse it. Two curious employees of the museum are however intrigued and decide to open it without him, which triggers a series of mysterious murders perpetrated my demon-like creatures and an ugly little monkey. Bear with me. In all of Italy, people become more violent and the crime rate goes drastically up. One of the two museum employees who survived and her boyfriend decide to try to get behind all of it. Witches from around the world arrive in Italy and hunt them down. They find out that the urn and talisman belonged to one of three witches who used to rule the world in the 1800s (?!) and that the parents of the employee, who she never met, were white witches who died trying to combat evil forces associated to a sister of this witch in Freiburg, Germany. And the employee hears the voice of her dead mother while fighting demons and japanese witches.

As if the plot wasn't lame enough, the acting is horrible (fake italian accent: "you meen dis ouse is fool of ghost?"), the "special effects" are at the most a nice try (spontaneous combustions, blood pooring out of all bodily orifices etc.) and the music is the classical horror movie spoof. It's almost comical.

Conclusion: Illuminati meets Army of Darkness meets Witchcraft. D minus. Save your money!

The other two movies I will be reviewing this weekend are THE protoype of slasher movies, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (remake of 2003) and the vampire thriller Salem's Lot.

stay tuned!

survived!

I am pleased to announce that my brain has (at least partially) survived the multiple assaults on it during the past weeks and that my two papers have been given in. Now, please excuse me while I go sleep for a week or two...

I fell in love with a movie and its soundtrack...

I've been refusing to watch Twilight, thinking
a) it's a teenie movie
and
b) therefore it must royally suck.

I was soooo wrong.
I watched the movie this weekend, and looooooove it! Can't wait for New Moon!

Here's a video of Paramore, a band I've been listening to for a couple of months. Songs of theirs are also featured on the Twilight soundtrack and I really think they're gifted. Listen to it, there aren't that many bands in the same musical category and with female lead vocals which are as good as they are!

oooh, I should've become an ASTRONOMER!!!

*** thoughts after watching Contact, with Jodie Foster***


I'll tell you a little secret about me: I've always been fascinated by alien life forms, ever since I was a little girl. I would stand on my balcony and look up to the sky, wondering...

Roswell & Area 51, bring it on!!

*sigh* so many things to do, so little time...

Dear Reader,

(I'm pretty sure you're the only one who still comes by - understandably). No, I haven't joined a street gang, nor ran off with the circus or gypsies and haven't cracked under pressure (until now at least).

I handed in a very important paper on Monday and will be handing another one (a bit less important) on Tuesday. When I finish my Master studies, I will never write anything again, I swear!!!

Looking forward to the summer road trip, I hope the canadian embassy will process my passport application quickly.

On another note, I talked to a good friend of mine back home and she told me our 10 year high school reunion - which I missed and it was really getting to me - was actually boring. I'm starting to realize my home is really here now.

I'm starting to gather info on getting a work permit for after my studies and apparently it'll be simpler than I feared, since I'll be considered an academic and that apparently makes it easier for all things immigration here.

What else? Hmm, not much. Heard back in sunny CA all hell brooke loose because of proposition 8.

Yesterday it was 30 degrees in Berlin and there was a thunderstorm. I like thunderstorms!! (and watching late night horror movies alone - at least when I'm brave enough to finish them)

Enough rambling. I'm alive and ok, cancel the search party...

Overdrive

I was at school yesterday from 8 AM to 6 PM (noon to 4 there were no classes)
then I went to meet with my professor to discuss mythesis until 7pm.

I got home, did 30 minutes of cardio, had dinner and from 9pm to 11pm I did some more work for university.

around 1am I was woken up by neighbours who thought it would be a great idea to play guitar and sing "kumbaya" with all their windows open. I politely asked them to stop, but they were not happy about it. I was so mad it took another 30 minutes to go back to sleep.

This morning I got up an hour earlier to finish my resume of last week's seminar in my statistics class, am now at work and will be shortly going home to finalise my notes for tomorrow afternoon's literature presentation. and do some cardio.

I feel like my brain is fried.

Music!

Sorry I haven't been around much lately... Love this song, it's not new or actual or anything, but I still think it's pretty catchy. I would love to see the future German Idol, Daniel Schuhmacher, sing this!

Peace, bbs!

Stay strong and don't catch the swine flu!!

btw, did you know there was already a swine flu epidemic in the seventies?

rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée...

Grandpa

My Grandpa passed away. He was 91 years old, three times father, 5 times grand-father and 3 times great-grand-father... And the best story-teller in the whole world.

Preview...

Of my trip next summer...




Berlin - Greece...

CGN

I've safely landed in Cologne and am almost back to normal health wise! Our airplane was one day old - it had this new plabe scent, it was pretty cool. I LOOOOOVE flying, I'm not at all afraid and I love turbulences. Feels like we're on a roller coaster. The lady sitting next to me, however didn't seem to be enjoying them quite as much as I was.


The weather here really sucks - 7 degrees and raining. Johnny, I'd take your californian 27 anytime!

I'll be here on "vacation" (meaning I don't have to work but will be writing some uni papers) for the next ten days...

Where's spring???

Well, not anywhere near my couch. I've been sick for the past couple of days, and yesterday I thought I was feeling better, so I decided to go to work to get the most important stuff done. Bad idea!

First of all, at the latest in the subway I started feeling dizzy and noticed although my throat felt better than the day before, my head was still completely fuzzy.

Secondly, I thought it was spring. it wasn't. We had a mix of rain, spontaneous snow storm, sun and lots and lots of wind. Great!!

Today I am back on my couch underneath my comforter and won't move one inch until I'm feeling better... or at least until tomorrow afternoon, I have a flight to catch to Cologne. I REALLY don't feel like flying sick...

I love cats, but...

I had a cat as I was growing up. Got him when I was 11, and he was my companion throughout my teenage years, survived the move into my tiny first appartment, the move to the second larger appartment with rommate, and when I moved to Germany, my cat retired and lived on a farm on the countryside :)

This week my neighbour was moving, and to help her out, I agreed to catsit her 2 adults cats for a day and a half. I never thought 36 hours could be so long.

First of all, it was kind of tricky, logistically speaking, because of Pouki-Helmoutte, so I put the hamster's cage in the hallway, and kept the cats in the living room / dining room / kitchen. During the first hour, the cats were a bit scared, and meowed a lot. As I was leaving the living room, they slipped through my legs and got into the hallway. All the noise had woken Pouki up and she came out of her nest. I froze for a second, afraid the cats would hunt my baby down.

1-Cats see hamster, and freeze.
2-Hamster sees cats, stands on her hind legs, and makes a loud noise I have NEVER heard her make before (kind of like a hamster-hiss, I guess)
3- Cats freak out and run away!!!

Good Pouki.

Anyways, I still locked the door after that, just to be sure.

Having cats is fun, you always get a surprise each time you come home (Friday afternoon - cats had thrown salt and pepper shakers on the floor, and my whole living room was now perfectly seasoned. Friday night, I no longer had a tablecloth on my table. Saturday morning, there was cat litter underneath the whole length of my dining room table - how appetizing)

Needless to say, as friends of the cat mommy arrived Saturday afternoon to pick them up, I was VERY happy. And celebrated by cleaning the whole appartment, which looked like the cats had shed ALL their winter fur in the 36 hours they were here.

I LOVE having a hamster!!!!

Losing my mind...

No, not quite yet, but I am feeling quite under the weather because I'm at the end of the semester, in the middle of exam week and days away from my internship in a high school.

"Ok, kids, now who can tell me what the following word means: e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d..."

Insomnia

Since I can't sleep, here's a great video from a group I used to love, around the millenium: Enigma



Gravity of Love

I haven't followed them much since The Screen behind the Mirror, but I brought their cd back with me when I went home this X-mas. Their video (in this case) and music is artful, intense and slightly erotic. In one word: tastefully done. Loooove it.

I am so happy to have my music again. I know practically everything is available nowadays via internet, but say what you want, it isn't the same as my good old cd collection.

Sorry, non francophone readers!

but this just really has to be in French!

Dans le cadre de ses capsules "Moment chouchou de stars", Marc Labrèche (pour ceux qui ne vienennt pas du Québec, c'est lui qui joue dans "Le Coeur a ses raisons") imite Christian Bégin, et ils se ressemblent juste trop!!!

Je me rappelle de Christian Bégin du temps de Télé-Pirate.... Oh boy qu'il a vieilli (oui oui, en beauté aussi!)

Alors voici la capsule, qui est assez drôle, et surtout, l'imitation qui est (du moins au début) vraiment réussie:

Price fluctuations

I went to see Katy Perry here in Berlin 6 months ago. I payed my ticket 11 euros...

Now her tickets for her tour on North America actually go from 40 $ to 342$!!!!

I'm really shocked by the fact that people actually pay that much money to see her live!! I mean, I love her studio music, but live, she just can't sing...

Hell, with those studio computers, I sound just like Celine, too. What makes a real singer is to be able to sing well live. The others are just entertainers. It doesn't make them bad for it, but they're just not singers.

Looooooove it!

Little boots - meddle

also check out their song Mathematics on their myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/littlebootsmusic

Today

Johnny Rat made me an honorary american for today. Thanks, John!!

I'm so moved to be able to experience this historical happening!!

Happy belated New Year, Y'all!

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